HARDLY a day goes past without various correspondents writing to newspapers lamenting another SNP crisis in health or education, as was evidenced by your lead letters today (August 16).

As in all countries there are vastly increased demands on Scotland's NHS which together with ongoing Tory austerity cuts and Brexit-related staff shortages place unprecedented pressures on our public services, yet we continue to easily outperform England or Wales under Tory and Labour control.

On education, if five-year-olds are not assessed how on earth are teachers expected to implement early intervention strategies to help pupils who need extra tuition?

Since 2007 the number of pupils in Scottish schools has fallen by 110,000 resulting in a pupil-teacher ratio of 13.6 to one, which compares favourably with England, where the ratio is 15 to one in secondary schools and 20 to one in primaries.

There are teacher shortages in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects like computing, maths and chemistry and from this month the Scottish Government is offering bursaries of £20,000 to eligible career changers to undertake an initial teacher education course and qualify in STEM subjects.

UCAS confirmed that 29,830 Scottish students have had their UK higher education places confirmed, which is a four per cent increase compared to 2017 and the number from the poorest background is up by five per cent.

Contrary to politically motivated gloomy assessments, Scotland still has a very highly educated population and the number of full-time college students completing recognised higher education qualifications is at all-time high.

Fraser Grant,

61 Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh.

I DO look forward to Keith Howell’s relentless persecution of the SNP Government as of course nothing but nothing will bring him to see any point in Scottish independence. Still it fair cheers me up to know he’s still hard at it on his keyboard because it’s great fun to speculate what he will do when Scotland regains its independence. Will he relegate his computer to the hall cupboard and accept defeat? Let’s just say, if he did that I’d eat my hat, but I’ll be frank, that recipe will not be required on my “to do “list.

Christine Grahame, SNP MSP,

The Scottish Parliament, Holyrood, Edinburgh.

MUCH is being made of Nicola Sturgeon’s apparent reluctance to demand again a second independence referendum. Ironically a handful of dyed-in-the-wool separatists are to demonstrate at the forthcoming SNP conference to lobby Ms Sturgeon – the politician whose raison d'etre is independence – to call another referendum ("Sturgeon to face independence protest at conference", The Herald, August 16)). Yet all this is entirely academic.

Whatever Ms Sturgeon or other passionate nationalists may want, there won't be another referendum until the early 2020s at the soonest – Theresa May reiterated this to Ms Sturgeon in Edinburgh earlier this month.

The wily SNP leader, known for her obsessive reading of opinion polls, accepts her chances of winning a referendum aren't in any case high enough to risk an imminent vote. Brexit hasn't delivered the surge in support she longs for.

What will be interesting at the conference is whether Ms Sturgeon will be able to badly let down her most loyal supporters while keeping them enthusiastically on side. She knows the 2021 Holyrood election will definitively test whether a referendum will happen over the next five years – it's "game off" until then.

Martin Redfern,

Woodcroft Road, Edinburgh.